Don LePan

B.A. ’75

Don LePan is the founder and CEO of Broadview Press, one of North America’s leading academic book publishers. He is the Managing Editor and one of the General Editors of The Broadview Anthology of British Literature (Broadview, 2006), and co-author of The Broadview Guide to Writing and various other course texts. He is also the author of a monograph on Shakespeare’s plots and medieval literature (Macmillan, 1989) and, in recent years, of a number of papers in Victorian studies and animal studies. His Animals: A Novel (Véhicule, 2009; Soft Skull/Counterpoint, 2010) has been described by J.M. Coetzee as “a powerful piece of writing and a disturbing call to conscience”; his second novel, Rising Stories, was published in 2015. He holds a BA from Carleton (1975), an MA from Sussex (1978), and an honorary doctorate from Trent (2004).

Don shares his experience of Carleton in his own words…

While I was studying towards a degree in English Literature at Carleton, and sopping up as much knowledge and experience as I could from a wonderful group of professors and fellow students, I gave no thought whatsoever to what I might do with that degree until February or March of my final year. As a practical strategy for the job world, I strongly recommend this approach to undergraduates in any era. As I now know after more than thirty years of running a company, it’s relatively easy through on-the-job training to teach gross margins and inventory management to  any young person who has already learned to read intelligently and write intelligently, and who has developed habits of genuine curiosity about (and emotional engagement with) the world, and all the living creatures in it. Conversely, it’s almost impossible through on-the-job training to teach someone who has devoted their undergraduate years to learning gross margins and inventory management how to develop broader habits of thought and feeling—without which no one can truly excel in any occupation.